With just five days left until polling day the two candidates were locked in an exact dead-heat according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls on 47.4 per cent, with both campaigns now claiming they were gaining momentum ahead of next Tuesday's vote.

As Barack Obama jetted into the Midwestern swing state of Wisconsin at the start of a three-state tour that included a rally in Las Vegas attended by the actress Eva Longoria, Mr Romney began a full-throated assault on the president's business record in Virginia.

After days of enforced restraint because of Sandy, a day of US election razzamatazz opened on a freezing airport apron in Green Bay, Wisconsin where Mr Obama cruised up to a rally in Air Force One, emerging onto the tarmac to hail supporters in a personalised leather bomber jacket.

"That was awwwwesome," said 13-year-old Wyatt Koski as the Presidential Boeing-747 killed its engines less than 100 yards from where he stood. "That was way better than getting candy at Hallowe'en."

A day after touring the devastation in New Jersey Mr Obama opened his speech on a conciliatory note, briefly recalling the "one nation" vision that had propelled him to the White House four years ago.

"We have also been inspired these past few days because when disaster strikes we see America at its best," he said. "All the petty differences that consume us in normal times seem to melt away. There are no Democrats or Republicans in the storm – there are just Americans."

But he was quickly back into attacking Mr Romney for his plans to cut taxes on millionaires and repeat the failed "top-down economic" policies of the Reagan and two Bush administrations that, he said, had caused "an economic crisis that we've been cleaning up for last four years".

"Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up the very same policies that failed our country so badly, and he is offering them up as 'change'," Mr Obama said, to laughter. "But let me tell you, Wisconsin, we know what change looks like."

Mr Obama then set out his final offering to voters, promising to invest in infrastructure and education and help ordinary Americans compete in a globalised economy that had forced painful changes on America.

Meanwhile, in the battleground state of Virginia Mr Romney attacked Mr Obama as the enemy of American business, mocking the President's proposal to create a new role for a business secretary in his administration.

"I don't think adding a new chair in his cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Mr Romney told supporters packed into a window factory in the town of Roanoke, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

"We don't need a secretary of business to understand business," he added, to whoops of endorsement from the crowd. "We need a president who understands business – and I do."

The Republican challenger, who made a $250 million (£160 million) fortune in private equity, was touring the conservative-leaning south of Virginia, a state crucial to his hopes of victory on Tuesday.

Once a dependable Republican stronghold, it was won in 2008 by Mr Obama – its first Democratic pick since 1964 – amid a rise in the number of Hispanic and young professional voters.

Mr Romney leads the race for Virginia's 13 electoral votes by an average of just 0.5 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.

The Republican yesterday reiterated a pledge to create 12 million new jobs, boasting that he would unleash America's "ace in the hole" – its untapped reserves of coal and other fossil fuels.

Lucy Bennington, who works on the window factory's painting line, said she backed the former Massachusetts governor to sweep away industrial regulations that hindered such firms.

"I've been here eight years and the past four have been terrible," said Ms Bennington, 65, who has postponed retirement to work "as long as possible" after being dealt a sharp blow by the recession.

However with an eye on news broadcasts that reach the state's moderate northern regions, Mr Romney also styled himself as the champion of unsung groups not typically praised by Republican candidates.

To cautious applause, he hailed "the single moms across America", who were "in many cases struggling, scraping by to have enough money to put a meal on the table for their kids".